It’s hard to express the magnitude of Frankie Knuckles’ contributions to music and its ever-changing evolution. Widely known as the “Godfather of House Music,” Frankie didn’t just create a genre; he placed the building blocks to birth an entire culture.
Early Career and the Death of Disco
Born Francis Nicholls in the Bronx, Frankie began learning the art of DJing from close childhood friend Larry Levan when he was a student at the Fashion Institute of Technology, “We would spend entire afternoons working up ideas on how to present a record so that people would hear it in a new way and fall in love with it,” Knuckles remembered in a later interview, “To us it was an art form.” Though initially he couldn’t even mix two records together, he was very much drawn to the concept and stuck with it. Often filling in for Larry at The Continental Baths, a venue that launched the careers of Bette Middler and her pianist Barry Manilow, Frankie took the mixing technique he learned in New York and brought it to Chicago, where he moved in the late 1970s.
Known for his previous gig playing RnB and disco in NYC, Frankie was the perfect choice for Chicago’s Warehouse nightclub who aimed to capitalize on the growing disco movement. Opening its doors in 1977, Frankie played at Warehouse regularly and even scored his own night and residency. But when the movie Saturday Night Fever was released later that same year, disco reached an alarming new level of popularity and subsequently turned the once underground disco, into more of a cheesy, commercial fad. Many who had championed the genre for years were quick to abandon it. Seemingly happening overnight, the desire people had for disco was in a spiraling decline.
The Birth of House
In hopes of saving disco’s downward spiral, Frankie went back to the drawing board to rethink the popularized sound. Manipulating magnetic tape reels, Frankie was able to extend the instrumental interludes on R&B and disco songs. With a rhythm box, precursor to the drum machine, Frankie added drum loops to back the instrumentals during his live mixing, “I would program different break beats and use them as segues between songs and additional beats,” he recalled in an interview in 2011, “I had my own little piece of heaven right there.”
With a stripped back and minimal approach, Frankie’s newly found sound and style brought a lot of attention to Warehouse, “At the time I was the only DJ in the city playing a sound that they hadn’t heard anywhere else.” Unsure of what to call the new sound, patrons of the club started referring to it as “House Music,” shortened from Warehouse, as it was the only place in Chicago where you could hear it. The club gained a cult following, attracting people from all over who were curious to see what house music was all about, including Detroit’s techno pioneer Derrick May, (and one-third of the Belleville Three) who would later gave Frankie his very first synthesizer.
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and Frankie Knuckles, moreover house, was no exception, “…When dance parties and regional DJs began popping up on the South Side of the city, to attract the same kind of audience that I had at Warehouse, they would advertise that they played ‘House Music.'”
Frankie performed at Warehouse until 1982 when he opened his own house music venue called the Power Plant. Here, he showcased several tracks recorded on reel-to-reel tapes by local artist Jamie Principle and helped secure commercial releases for several of those tracks like “Baby Wants to Ride” and “Your Love,” which are universally recognized as some of the earliest house classics.
A Lasting Legacy
After Power Plant closed in 1987, Frankie took his style to the UK, performing at one of the first London clubs to welcome the new sound, the legendary Delirium. Chicago house and Detroit techno was beginning to revolutionize England’s nightlife. Around the same time, with the emergence of acid house, Europeans unearthed an associated drug lifestyle with the genre and created a unique sociomusicology within the community, thus spawning the onset of rave culture.
DJ, producer, and Grammy award winner, Frankie Knuckles went on to sign with Virgin Records and has either produced, or remixed for Michael Jackson, Mary J Blige, Janet Jackson, Pet Shop Boys, Diana Ross, Luther Vandross, and Toni Braxton. But even after all of the success, Frankie would always greet you with a big smile. Friends say, his “infectiously warm demeanor spread to everyone he met or was listening to his music.”
Today, with dance music’s popularity at an all-time high, the sudden passing of Frankie Knuckles has left a profound impact on music fans around the globe. Simply put, if it weren’t for his innovations, the plight of brands like Disco Donnie Presents, and those that attend our shows, would’ve ceased to exist.
